You Should Play This: Super Mario 64: A Mystery Beneath The Surface

You Should Play This: Super Mario 64: A Mystery Beneath The Surface

You Should Play This is a running column by Brandon Hyde detailing the unnoticed intricacies in video games.

Super Mario 64 is one of the best games ever made. The game itself is a testament to innovation, imagination, and skill. Mario as a character has never felt more fun, than when players control him bounding about the open environment. Every level feels determined to top the previous one, with new enemies, ideas, and challenges. Games as a whole have evolved over the years, using the past as a platform for a new future, building towards bigger heights. The importance of Super Mario 64 persists, however, consistently showing players the value of looking back on the game. Super Mario 64 continues to be a great game by giving the player an experience with mysteries regarding its own environment, mechanics, and even mission structure.

The first few levels of Super Mario 64 are difficult to define in what the game wants from the player. Each world gives the player a series of different tasks, some not even explicit in nature or told to the player. The success of that mission is up to the player, first to understand the task at hand and then the process of accomplishment. As you progress through the level, however, the mystery of the game begins to unfold. At times, the player can succeed at an entirely other mission, without even knowing about it. The game opens itself to the player, allowing for a new way of understanding the environment. This game is not like the past Super Mario entries, but a whole new exploration, with a familiar character. The mission is not to survive until the end of a level, but more so to find new and exciting ways to complete the task before you.

The game goes as far to subvert the idea of how to progress in the game itself. The process of finding a new area of the game is through completing tasks in each world, getting stars for each mission. Once these stars are collected, the player can use these to open up new worlds to get even more stars. But then the game uses this notion against the player, with the mystery going into the castle itself. Inside of the game’s hub world, the castle hides its own secrets, behind doorways and secret passages. Players can look into the ceiling to be transported to another area, drain the pool to find a sewer entrance, and even jump through a stained glass window to find a new, unmarked area. The game is teaching the player to look into the smallest crevices and the largest chasms for the secrets. None of these secret areas are explicitly told to the player, but only implied throughout the game.

The mechanics of Super Mario 64 are simple enough to pick up and play, but there is a learning curve to mastering them. Instead of laying out a proper tutorial for every part of the game, the player is allowed to learn and experiment along the way. This freedom allows for the player a sense of discovery with each new part of the game. Using parts of the environment to overcome an obstacle, an enemy for more height on a jump, over even a faster way to traverse the level. All of these parts come together to help the player better understand the game, but also find more to explore, more of the game itself. Instead of closing the player off, the game allows for an openness with its own mechanics, showing how even in gameplay, mysteries can be found.

Super Mario 64 feels at times modern and classic. The game uses all of its pieces to come together as a whole, with everything working towards a common goal. Each part of the game reveals itself to the player slowly, but surely to ensure close attention to detail. This process allows for the game to keep twisting itself on its own head for more surprises, when each new level is found. Even as games move forward, it is important to look back and understand how games of the past operate on a mechanical level. Super Mario 64 took the Super Mario franchise into the future, not just with the technology, but in gameplay, as well.